Breathe Like You Did When You Were a Kid

In the previous article we talked about how the right breathing pattern helps create stability in your body.

That stability starts a ripple effect that helps create proper joint control everywhere else.

It's the reason kids move so well. 

A key part of learning to stabilize your core correctly is learning to push your low abdominal wall out, just like you did when you were little without anyone telling you to do it.

But HOW does that work to make you more stable? I've personally always found that understanding how something works goes a long way toward my actually doing it!


Imagine a cylinder with a piston on top pushing downward. In this analogy, the cylinder is your torso and the piston is your diaphragm muscle. As the piston pushes down, the pressure inside the cylinder (your torso) increases and expands outward in every direction - forward to your belly button, backwards toward your spine, and out to the sides as well.

That cylinder is now much harder to bend or deform when it's pressurized from the inside.

Your lumbar spine is now mechanically braced by pressure from the inside.

That's the ideal state of how abdominal pressure creates a structurally more stable core.

And if you want to protect yourself from back pain and get stronger, it's worth the effort to learn how to do this.

If you’d like to learn more about this, sign up for my free online course: Low Back Bootcamp if you haven’t already, and I’ll walk you through the steps.

Don't worry if the breathing and abdominal pressure steps feels awkward and foreign. Be patient and practice them over and over until they become automatic.

Your brain learns what you do repeatedly.

Doug Barsanti
ReInvention Fitness

P.S.  Sometimes those first steps are the hardest. Take them anyway.